Last year tied with 2010 as warmest on record - British data

OSLO, Jan 26 (Reuters) - Last year tied with 2010 as the
hottest on record, in a new sign of long-term global warming
stoked by human activities, according to British data on Monday
that back up U.S. findings of record-breaking heat in 2014.

The worldwide data, compiled by the Met Office and the
University of East Anglia from records stretching back to 1850,
showed average surface temperatures last year were 0.56 degree
Celsius (1.0 Fahrenheit) above the long-term average of 1961-90.

"This ranks 2014 as the joint warmest year in the record,
tied with 2010, but the uncertainty ranges mean it's not
possible to definitively say which of several recent years was
the warmest," a joint statement said.

With 2014, all of the 10 warmest years on record have been
this century, with the exception of 1998.

Given the statistical ranges, the data echoed U.S. findings.
On Jan. 16, the U.S. space agency NASA and the National
Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration said last year was
the warmest on record, just ahead of 2010..

The British team said the findings showed "several datasets
in broad agreement". Discrepancies occur because they use
different ways to determine temperatures in places with few
thermometers, such as the Arctic.

The statement linked a long-term trend of rising
temperatures in recent decades to human emissions of greenhouse
gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels. China, the United
States and India are the top emitters.

Almost 200 governments have agreed to limit global warming
to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, and
temperatures have already risen by about 0.9 C. Governments will
meet in Paris in December to work out a deal.

Sceptics who doubt that humans influence the climate often
point to what U.N. studies have called a hiatus in warming in
recent years, perhaps linked to natural variations in the sun's
output or factors such as sun-dimming ash from volcanoes.

"To say that warming has stopped is not accurate," Professor
Tim Osborn of the University of East Anglia told Reuters. But he
said the pace of warming had been faster in the 1980s and 1990s.

Thomas Stocker, a professor at the University of Bern who
co-chaired a 2013 U.N. report about climate change, said the
recent run of warm years meant "the possibility is quite there
that this hiatus is over".

Still, he told Reuters that climate trends had to be judged
over decades, not by individual years.
(Editing by Alison Williams)